Stephan: Almost all the policies of conservatism are lies, fantasies, or myths. Marijuana prohibition, abstinence only sex-ed, marriage equality. austerity economics. All nothing but toxic claptrap. Whenever any of these schemes are put to the test of actual outcome data their inferiority and incorrectness is made glaringly obvious.
Here's another one: if you make contraceptives easily available then STDS will go up, there will be more abortions. This is the latest on the Colorado contraceptive study that SR has been covering since it began. The study tests this very issue and the data has revealed something quite definitive. What happens when contraceptives are made easily available to teens and and low income women is that unwanted pregnancies drop like a rock, and so does the rate of pregnancy termination. And for every dollars the program costs it saves $5.85 in medical and hospital costs. You would think everyone would be happy. You would be wrong.
For the Right science is irrelevant, that isn't the field they are playing on. To understand the Theocratic Right one has to accept that the real issue is not sex, but purity. And ultimately it is about controlling the behavior of that part of the human race with vaginas. .
It is an existential issue arising from the fact that the only way into incarnation is through the uterus of a woman. This is an absolute truth, that all of human society revolves around. Within their bodies women carry the transporter that moves consciousness into matter.
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If birth control were free, there would be fewer unwanted pregnancies. This is the longstanding hypothesis put forth by women’s health advocates (and correspondingly written into the Affordable Care Act). Over the last six years, a private grant fund from the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s late wife) has given Colorado a unique opportunity to test this hypothesis. The results are astounding.
When teenagers and poor women in the state were offered free, long-acting contraceptives—i.e. intrauterine devices (IUD) and implants—they overwhelmingly accepted, and the rate of teen pregnancies has plunged. Teen births in Colorado dropped by 40 percent between 2009 and 2013 and the number of abortions in the state decreased by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
The New York Times called the results of the experiment “startling,” in a cover story this week, noting that while teenage births “have been declining nationally, experts say the timing and magnitude of the reductions in Colorado are a strong […]
It is very telling that the far right wing evangelicals of the GOP will not even acknowledge the dramatic drop in abortions when contraceptive measures are readily available to young Americans.